PlanetFargo

A Plea on Behalf of Curling

Everyone needs a hero. My hero? CURLERS. That's right. For years this sport has been the butt of the Olympics joke, and yet these fine athletes carry on. There are no sponsorships to be had, no big name endorsement deals to be signed, no huge major league contracts available to top draft picks. No, Curlers curl because the game is a beautiful thing. They curl because etiquette demands that after a match you and the opposing team are required to buy one another rounds of drinks. They curl because intense Canadian studies have shown that drinking beer makes rocks go faster. And they're ordinary people! Doctors and lawyers and grocery clerks and those guys who sweep up after you in the movie theatre (you think, "I spilled my goobers, and they're rolling down the floor." He thinks: "Practice.")

But c'mon people. It's time these unsung heroes got the recognition they deserve! It's worked for skating and snowboarding: What curlers need to take their noble sport to the big times is simply a lucrative video game contract. Here at GameSpy, being the social reformers we are, we're here to help sweep clean the way, so to speak. Here's my concept -- I see it being advertised at next year's Electronic Entertainment Expo with flashing lights and booth babes wearing nothing but hats with ear flaps.

Not sold yet? Consider these advantages to an X-treme curling video game:

A curling team captain is named the "Skip." This means it's actually perfectly legitimate to yell "What up, Skip?" as a greeting.

Multiplayer made easy, thanks to the fact that Latency isn't an issue. In fact, this is probably the only sporting game that would allow you to play by email.

Unlike OTHER Olympic sports, the French and Russian judges can't flup it all up. Now, I'm not trying to say that what happened to the Canadians in figure skating was a total bend-over buttrape, but -- well, yes, yes I am. Give me a crowbar and point me toward some knees, people.

Special curling videogame cheat modes could include a code where, instead of brooms, opposing teams go at it with pitchforks.

A Curling game would be the perfect venue for multiplayer class-based teamplay. You'd have the "Skip," who's sort of a team captain and strategist, the "Sweepers," who use the brooms to help maneuver the stone down the ice, and you have the "Stoners," who sit on the sidelines and smoke.

Curling is also known as "The Roaring Game." It's just begging for a hardcore videogame soundtrack filled with licensed music, such as the throbbing curling beats of Motorhead, Bon Jovi, or Captain and Tennille.

You could unlock famous historical teams, such as the infamous February 1540 Scottish curling duel between countryman Gavin Hamilton and a latin-speaking monk named John Sclater. I believe the exact words of Sclater's challenge were "Curlus glutemus un exlemporo," which roughly translates to "I'm gonna curl this rock so high up your ass that you're gonna limp off the ice."

Real curling requires specially made shoes as well as specially made stones of dense granite that can only be quarried from a special island off the coast of Scotland. That's a pretty intense barrier to entry. All a curling videogame would require is: a Playstation 2, a TV, 2 controllers, 3 pints of Guinness, two cases of Molson Ice, a five-pound bag of barbecue potato chips, four links of polish sausage with hot mustard, some hot wings, a giant jar of sauerkraut, and some sort of air freshener.

I'll leave the exact details up to some game developer somewhere. Meanwhile, I'm gonna surf through the television until I can find some footage of the Canadian team dominating the sport in this years' Olympics. Either that or dirty movies.

[PlanetFargo is posted every Friday at GameSpy.com. Read the archives! Fargo is an online community gaming journalist who would love to be an Olympic athlete, but finds that curling is too strenuous of a sport. Mail Fargo!